Any way to adjust Powertune Settings in Registry

Lord_Exodia

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Sep 29, 2005
Messages
7,008
Basically I'm looking for a way to for +20 power tune settings for both of my cards via the registry so that I can avoid useing amd Overdrive to do this. Ultimately, I just want to use Afterburner. Without enabling +20 powertune via amd overdrive my gpu's throttle up and down like crazy. I actually NEED +20 to get the best performance possible. So that forces me to enable overdrive, set defaults, then enable +20 on powertune for each of my cards then apply. Then I load afterburner and set my oc profile and fan profile.

I have done tons of testing and only when I use amd overdrive to overclock and add the +20 powertune settings do all of my gpu frequency throttling stop.

Is there a registry key that can be modified to get this done? The only stuff I found on a online search was some guy saying he didn't want to use CCC, I don't care if ccc is installed. It doesn't bother me and I have no problems with it. I'd really love to be able to force the powertune via registry so that I can use afterburner for all my overclocking and fan profiles etc.. all while enjoying 0 gpu frequency throttling.

Summary;

Overdrive to overclock my gpus with +20 powertune = 0 gpu throttling and my overclock frequency holding well
Overdrive enabled for +20 powertune only along with afterburner for overclocking and fan profile = slight GPU frequency throttling
MSI afterburner along with ovedrive disabled = throttling like crazy. My GPU's can dip to as low as 560Mhz

So I would like to be able to force powertune +20 on in the registry 24/7 and keep overdrive disabled.
 
I looked into this when I first got my 6970, and I couldn't find anything in the registry that works. I spent hours searching, adjusting, and rebooting but nothing seemed to do the trick. You could try to create a profile with CCC, but I still think you have to have overdrive enabled for it to work.
 
You can use sapphire trixx to overclock

I never tried Trixx. Can you confirm that when using the program and leaving overdrive disabled that there is no gpu frequency fluctuations.

the way I checked this was by running Kombuster or Furmark with an on screen display and monitoring my voltage and gpu and memory frequency.

As my OP says, with afterburner alone (used several versions, currently on 2.2 beta 5) my gpu's would drop down and up from 560 up to 960 and back every few seconds etc..

With overdrive it would stay at 960mhz 100% of the time with maybe one fluctuation at the very beginning as the cards are ramping up

With afterburner and overdrive I get some fluctuations (maybe 2 a minute) and they dont seem to drop below 830mhz.

Also will trixx work on a card with a different bios than a sapphire?

I looked into this when I first got my 6970, and I couldn't find anything in the registry that works. I spent hours searching, adjusting, and rebooting but nothing seemed to do the trick. You could try to create a profile with CCC, but I still think you have to have overdrive enabled for it to work.

Yes, you have to enable overdrive in order for you to add the powertune. I found some stuff digging through google but it seemed more people wanted to do this so they could avoid using CCC. I don't mind having CCC installed, I just want overdrive disabled. To be honest, I have had issues with my monitors doing weird shit. E.G. my screen rolling up and 2 inches of the top come to the bottom, It gets worse and worse, sometimes a blank screen, I then hit cntrl alt del and unplug and replug my 2 display port monitors and I'm good to go for a few minutes. I tried so much troubleshooting including running the cards at stock bios and clocks, clean driver installs, different drivers etc.. Only when I disabled overdrive did I find this fix to work. Recently I started using overdrive again and it has started again, it started happening every little while mid online game :eek: I disabled overdrive and it went away. This is what started me on this journey to find a way around using overdrive. I'm not 100% sure it's overdrive but it seems this way to me from my testing.
 
Last edited:
I never tried Trixx. Can you confirm that when using the program and leaving overdrive disabled that there is no gpu frequency fluctuations.

the way I checked this was by running Kombuster or Furmark with an on screen display and monitoring my voltage and gpu and memory frequency.

As my OP says, with afterburner alone (used several versions, currently on 2.2 beta 5) my gpu's would drop down and up from 560 up to 960 and back every few seconds etc..

With overdrive it would stay at 960mhz 100% of the time with maybe one fluctuation at the very beginning as the cards are ramping up

With afterburner and overdrive I get some fluctuations (maybe 2 a minute) and they dont seem to drop below 830mhz.

Also will trixx work on a card with a different bios than a sapphire?



Yes, you have to enable overdrive in order for you to add the powertune. I found some stuff digging through google but it seemed more people wanted to do this so they could avoid using CCC. I don't mind having CCC installed, I just want overdrive disabled. To be honest, I have had issues with my monitors doing weird shit. E.G. my screen rolling up and 2 inches of the top come to the bottom, It gets worse and worse, sometimes a blank screen, I then hit cntrl alt del and unplug and replug my 2 display port monitors and I'm good to go for a few minutes. I tried so much troubleshooting including running the cards at stock bios and clocks, clean driver installs, different drivers etc.. Only when I disabled overdrive did I find this fix to work. Recently I started using overdrive again and it has started again, it started happening every little while mid online game :eek: I disabled overdrive and it went away. This is what started me on this journey to find a way around using overdrive. I'm not 100% sure it's overdrive but it seems this way to me from my testing.

It works. I had some problems with 2 gpus in crossfire and didn't want to disable ulps so I just ended up editing ccc values to overclock. Afterburner has the same problem anyway.
 
There is no way to do that. There is a known bug between Afterburner and CCC Powertune. Afterburner will often ''reset''your Powertune from 20% to 0%.

The only thing you can do is not using Afterburner at all, and flash your BIOS with your overclock settings instead.

That's what I did with my Quad-Fire set-up: 6990+6970+6970, and it's working fine for me now. Afterburner was always resetting my Powertune to 0%. So now I don't use Afterburner, and overclock via my BIOS instead with the same values for my 4 GPUs.
 
It works. I had some problems with 2 gpus in crossfire and didn't want to disable ulps so I just ended up editing ccc values to overclock. Afterburner has the same problem anyway.

I'm back to report that sadly this isn't true. I downloaded and installed trixx from here,
http://www.sapphireselectclub.com/ssc/TriXX/TriXX.aspx

I installed version 4.02 and let me assure you that if your running a pair of 6950s unlocked with a overclock set by trixx with amd overdrive and powertune +20 disabled, then your clocks are fluctuating as bad as the same scenario using msi afterburner.

It seems that in order to keep your clocks as stable as possible you need to use, overdrive enabled with the +20 powertune setting, no if and's or but's

Oh well. I guess I'll go back to afterburner for the osd and fan profile. Thanks for the suggestion, I'm sure you meant well but check your settings, you may be losing performance and not even know it. ;)
 
Last edited:
Well it definitely worked for me, sometimes it screwd up and reset the CCC settings but eventually I had it working. When I got my dual card though I just scrapped afterburner and trixx since CCC handles things the best, I just wish there was some registry edit to change voltage.
 
Well it definitely worked for me, sometimes it screwd up and reset the CCC settings but eventually I had it working. When I got my dual card though I just scrapped afterburner and trixx since CCC handles things the best, I just wish there was some registry edit to change voltage.

To change voltage you can flash your own modded bios using rbe, my cards run 2.95 24/7 stable.

Anyway, It worked fine, my overclock stuck. I think your missing what I'm saying. The program works to overclock and control the fan etc.. etc..

However if you leave overdrive disabled and obviously that keeps +20 powertune disabled you are SOL (Shit Out of Luck) Your gpu's will run at the overclocked frequencies however when you game or stress test them you can watch your clocks using a on screen display like the one found in afterburner.

In this case test your setup with furmark or Kombuster (basically same thing) while it's stressing on the extreme burn in look at your gpu clocks. You'll notice that they dance around quite a bit and go up and down to a bunch of different frequencies. If you use overdrive to handle everything they are solid 99% of the time without much fluctuations, if you use afterburner or trixx along with overdrive with +20 powertune it fluctuations more than just alone with overdrive just not as much as with the programs alone.

No aftermarket overclocking utilities give you a +20 powertune over ride.
 
No aftermarket overclocking utilities give you a +20 powertune over ride.

Ok, I guess it was all in my imagination then. Thank you for telling me what I was seeing was wrong, I mean I even made a thread about the same thing but apparently you're right and my results are wrong. :rolleyes: I mean, a quick google search shows people are using trixx with power control settings but I guess they're all wrong too.
 
Ok, I guess it was all in my imagination then. Thank you for telling me what I was seeing was wrong, I mean I even made a thread about the same thing but apparently you're right and my results are wrong. :rolleyes: I mean, a quick google search shows people are using trixx with power control settings but I guess they're all wrong too.

You are again misunderstanding what I'm saying.

Yes you can use Trixx along with amd overdrive and the +20 powertune setting

Yes you can do the same thing with Afterburner

Neither is as 100% stable as when you use overdrive to overclock, manage your fan AND +20 powertune setting (Nearly 100% stable with little to no fluctuations of core frequency)

Neither Afterburner or Trixx WITHOUT using AMD Overdrive to enable the +20 Powertune setting give you a stable clock speed. Don't believe me run Kombuster or Furmark on the estreme burn in setting and watch your core frequencies on a On screen Display.

What I'm basically saying is no overclocking utility seems to override the need to enable AMD overdrive to use the +20 Powertune setting. The result of not using overdrive and the +20 powertune setting along with trixx or afterburner etc.. is ridiculous gpu core speed fluctuations every few seconds.

My ultimate goal is to eliminate the need for using the AMD overdrive AP to enable +20 Powertune and force it on in the registry via a edit etc... I have not had any luck. Currently it seems there is no other remedy other than to use either overdrive for everything or use trixx or afterburner ALONG with overdrive for the +20 Powertune setting which is what I DO NOT want to do, but it seems like I don't have a choice ;)
 
Last edited:
Just flash your BIOS with your stable overclock voltage, and use CCC to OC and put Powertune at 20%.

No need to use Afterburner or Trixx then. No bugs. :)
 
I haven't looked at the overclocking tools lately but last I knew no matter which tool you used to overclock with you had to adjust the Powertune setting in CCC.

Now, that being said... I found the recent [H] article on the Sapphire Toxic 6950 very interesting. [H] saw an OOB powertune issue with this card and the way Sapphire fixed it was to provide [H] with a updated bios. That suggests to me that there could be a way to set Powertune values in the bios.
 
[H]ocusPocus;1037691005 said:
I haven't looked at the overclocking tools lately but last I knew no matter which tool you used to overclock with you had to adjust the Powertune setting in CCC.

Now, that being said... I found the recent [H] article on the Sapphire Toxic 6950 very interesting. [H] saw an OOB powertune issue with this card and the way Sapphire fixed it was to provide [H] with a updated bios. That suggests to me that there could be a way to set Powertune values in the bios.

Interesting, I'd be all over that like white on rice. I'm gonna email w1zard to see if he can look into this and if it can be added to a newer version of RBE
 
[H]ocusPocus;1037691005 said:
I haven't looked at the overclocking tools lately but last I knew no matter which tool you used to overclock with you had to adjust the Powertune setting in CCC.

Now, that being said... I found the recent [H] article on the Sapphire Toxic 6950 very interesting. [H] saw an OOB powertune issue with this card and the way Sapphire fixed it was to provide [H] with a updated bios. That suggests to me that there could be a way to set Powertune values in the bios.

Your post piqued my curiosity so instead of using modded 6950 bios I flashed with a 6970 bios this did not help at all. I was thinking that the bios throttled the core speed, if the card was exceeding the driver-controlled TDP. Since 6970s are spec-d to have a higher TDP than a 6950 my theory was that their bios may help.

At the end of the day I think it's a bios thing but the throttling may present itself under 2 scenarios, if your exceeding the driver controlled TDP of the card OR if you have a unlocked reference 6950 with 2 6 pin power connectors instead of a 6pin and 8pin setup like 6970s have and like the new Saphire Toxic 6950s have. I bet they flashed a modded 6970 bios for the card to fix it. ;)
 
Your post piqued my curiosity so instead of using modded 6950 bios I flashed with a 6970 bios this did not help at all. I was thinking that the bios throttled the core speed, if the card was exceeding the driver-controlled TDP. Since 6970s are spec-d to have a higher TDP than a 6950 my theory was that their bios may help.

I have read that flashing a 6970 bios onto a 6950 does not cause the device ID to change so the driver and/or bios can still limit TDP to 6950 values easily enough. See this thread: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138247

I bet they flashed a modded 6970 bios for the card to fix it. ;)

Maybe :) Although from the performance comparison between the old and new bios versions, it appears the shader count was 1408 for both (6950 value) as performance was almost identical, implying a modded 6950 bios? (or maybe there is just one bios and manufacturers mod it to either 6950 or 6970 values)
 
I flashed all my 6990+6970+6970 BIOS to 1.25v (and don't change anything else in the BIOS), and then I simply OC with CCC, and put Powertune to 20% for each GPU.

So that way, I don't need to use Trixx or Afterburner. Everythying is working fine.

If I use Afterburner, my Power tune setting for all cards is always resetting to 0%, and I get throttling. So I solve the problem that way. No throttling, no matter the OC.

I can get my 6990 to 1095/1475 without throttling. :) But one of my 6970 is ''stuck'' at 1010, so the 4 GPUs are at 1010. :)
 
I finally gave up OC in Afterburner since I had to run CCC at the same time and they didn't always play nice. I feel your pain ;) There is a registry hack that allows OC above the standard limit in CCC, but no custom fan or voltage adjustments without running AB at the same time :(
 
I finally gave up OC in Afterburner since I had to run CCC at the same time and they didn't always play nice. I feel your pain ;) There is a registry hack that allows OC above the standard limit in CCC, but no custom fan or voltage adjustments without running AB at the same time :(

I think fan and voltage can be set in the bios via RBE. I wasn't aware of the registry hack to override OC limits in CCC. That would be useful.
 
Unconventional, but it might work (Worked for me). Flash a ASUS bios on to your card (unlocked or locked, I am assuming you have a reference card), ...now download and install asus smart doctor. Smart doc has a feature to disable ccc overclock limits, use it, and when you uninstall smart doc the raised values will stay. Pick OC utility of your choice (AB for me), raise the pt settings to 20% in overdrive and enjoy. There was absolutely no conflict for me, after that AB and Overdrive played nice...

best of all i didnt have to tweak registry files or AB files
 
The registry hack basically makes the changes the ASUS software does with out loading the software, no need to flash BIOS
 
Yeah from that I understand that's what it does, but unfortunately It didnt work so well for me (racerx), voltages would not stick, and i would get the occasional crash. I have heard it works for many people though
 
Unconventional, but it might work (Worked for me). Flash a ASUS bios on to your card (unlocked or locked, I am assuming you have a reference card), ...now download and install asus smart doctor. Smart doc has a feature to disable ccc overclock limits, use it, and when you uninstall smart doc the raised values will stay. Pick OC utility of your choice (AB for me), raise the pt settings to 20% in overdrive and enjoy. There was absolutely no conflict for me, after that AB and Overdrive played nice...

best of all i didnt have to tweak registry files or AB files

This is how I"ve done it up to this point. whenever I update the driver I'll reinstall smartdoctor and then enable overclocking range enhancement and then reboot and uninstall smartdoctor. I have yet to try the registry hack but I found the thread posted above a few days ago. I may do that from now on.

Back to the main topic at hand,

I believe when Sapphire releases their new bios for the Toxic card I may flash it onto one of my cards to test it. Obviously if it bricks I'll revert back to the stock bios and then reflash the modded 6970 bios I'm using on both cards now. I'll update the thread if this fixes the throttling issue. Currently I'm using MSI afterburner along with AMD overdrive for the +20 Powertune setting without any problems and barely any throttling at all. Seems pretty solid and I have my fan profile and everything working. I'd much prefer to get Overdrive out of the picture as I expect my monitors to start going crazy soon, IF/When that happens I'll just disable overdrive, reboot and then re-enable overdrive as I've been doing. Sigh :(
 
[H]ocusPocus;1037696569 said:
Thanks. I was aware of using SmartDoctor to do this, but I would have had to flash to an ASUS bios and I decided against doing that.

Here is a screen shot of my 2 6950's overclocked using the registry change for CCC. I am using Afterburner for voltage and custom fan control

137714415.jpg
 
Last edited:
Just use MSI Afterburner and change UnofficialOverclockingMode = 2 to disable PowerTune.
You won't have to worry about software OCP anymore. Setup 2D/3D profiles to enable downclocking which doesn't always work when manually setting clocks. Clicking RESET usually gets it working again, otherwise you just have to reboot.
 
Last edited:
Just use MSI Afterburner and change UnofficialOverclockingMode = 2 to disable PowerTune.
You won't have to worry about software OCP anymore. Setup 2D/3D profiles to enable downclocking which doesn't always work when manually setting clocks. Clicking RESET usually gets it working again, otherwise you just have to reboot.

If I do anything at all with that option I get a BSOD loop. It says Service Exception.

For some reason, I never could get that working on my system.

Maybe a reformat will help. I'm not gonna go that far to get afterburner unofficial overclocking to work. Asus Smart Doctor overclocking range enhancement works fine but for whatever reason if I change that value in afterburner.cfg to 1 or 2 I get a bsod loop forcing me to go into safe mode to change it back so that I can get back into my system. I gave up on that long ago.
 
If I do anything at all with that option I get a BSOD loop. It says Service Exception.

For some reason, I never could get that working on my system.

Maybe a reformat will help. I'm not gonna go that far to get afterburner unofficial overclocking to work. Asus Smart Doctor overclocking range enhancement works fine but for whatever reason if I change that value in afterburner.cfg to 1 or 2 I get a bsod loop forcing me to go into safe mode to change it back so that I can get back into my system. I gave up on that long ago.

Does that happen right away or in PunkBuster games? You have to disable low level monitoring in the new beta 6 for BC2.
 
Does that happen right away or in PunkBuster games? You have to disable low level monitoring in the new beta 6 for BC2.

The BSOD happens as soon as I set that and launch afterburner. Even if Afterburner isn't set to start up with the system, my system will be in a BSOD loop until I go into the safe mode and change the 2 or 1 value back to 0
 
[H]ocusPocus;1037696561 said:
I'd for one would be really interested to know how that works out for you.

Okay so here goes, I was able to get the elusive Sapphire toxic bios flashed to both of my cards. My buddy's toxic was throttling horribly unless he forced powertune to +20 and since his psu is really getting it's ass kicked in that system he didn't feel comfortable forcing +20 as a permanent solution. His problem is now fixed.

Secondly after flashing my 2 6950s to this new bios I can report that I only throttle in Furmark and Kombuster with the extreme burn in setting and I have found out that this is more of a driver reaction to the power unlock that this program causes.; So without powertune at +20 I notice more stability and better game performance EVEN AT THE SAME CLOCK!! :) It's also cool that my card's default core speed is now 880 on the core instead of 800mhz. This bios also unlocks the 6970 overclocking range so my maximum overclock is 950 in CCC instead of 900 like on a stock 6950.

Finally the last cool thing this bios does is I now have a +50 Powertune setting instead of just + or - 20!!! I'm excited about this as I'm going to test later tonight if this allows my card to overclock even further. I will update this thread again with that info soon.

This bios did throw up a scary message before I flashed it where it said, Powertune is not located or something like that. I flashed anyway and everything obviously went well. I just wanted to note that this error can happen and for it not to stop someone in their tracks. Remember you have a fallback bios so you could always switch back, boot back into windows, flip back to the corrupted bios and then flash over it with whatever bios you had on there before that worked.
 
I've seen this posted here on the forum but for those who were wondering the +50 setting disappears when you enable overclocking range enhancements, basically your options go back to default + or - 20. Somebody had mentioned that and I forgot. I don't see a need for +50 below 950mhz as it doesn't seem to add any stability or extra performance over +20 that you can notice in game or anything.

I was hoping the +50 would come in handy when I'm at the 1000+ core area and allow me to go beyond my highest OC which is in my sig. I'm still happy and running my cards at 965/1410 24/7.

This new bios did indeed make my cards more stable though, especially if I ever want to run without the +20 setting, but with a 1500 watt power supply like I have and a setup like I have I have aloooooooot of headroom on my psu so +20 stays on for both cards. :D

Hopefully my triple Southern Island or Kepler Watercooled system (coming soon) will stress my psu a bit more. ;)
 
[H]ocusPocus;1037778752 said:
So this sounds alot like a 6970 bios? Did it change memory settings?

Memory comes at 1300 mhz which is lower than the 1375 of the 6970 bios. Keep in mind the 6970 bios doesn't give you a +50 powertune option. RBE picks it up as a 6950.
 
Hey guys, is adjusting power control needed if your not overclocking?

No honestly. The cards shouldn't throttle if at stock speeds. From my testing at least that's what I found. The Sapphire Toxic 6950 DOES throttle with the wrong bios but that's probably because it's clocked at 6970 speeds for the gpu.
 
Back
Top